Nougat is official, and it’s time to dig a little deeper into what to expect from Google with Android updates, and according to Dave Burke, Google’s VP of Engineering, those updates include a regular maintenance schedule.
Google has been sending out regular monthly updates to devices with their security patch program, but this is about to extend to maintenance releases to improve Android as well. In his post to Android Developers this morning, Mr Burke said:
We’re moving Nougat into a new regular maintenance schedule over the coming quarters. In fact, we’ve already started work on the first Nougat maintenance release, that will bring continued refinements and polish, and we’re planning to bring that to you this fall as a developer preview. Stay tuned!
Whether these ‘regular’ maintenance issues will be released monthly with the security updates isn’t clear, but there will be releases. In fact with no release date scheduled for the upcoming Nexus Phones, it’s possible we may see the first Maintenance Release (MR1) launch with those phones.
We’ll see more about these Maintenance Releases over the next few months, until then we’ll just have to settle for the newly launched official Android Nougat release which will start hitting the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player and Pixel C from today.
